Planetary Planning Podcast

This episode brings you a very rich conversation with Elisa Schramm, about what happens when people try in fundamental ways to question their relationship with and impact on more-than-humans or non-humans. Elisa, as she herself puts it, is a “human geographer interested in processes of transformation towards more sustainable and just futures, with a focus on everyday practices, especially around housing/dwelling and mobilities.” She is especially interested in practices and transformations to post-capitalism or post-growth. She currently works as a post-doctoral researcher in human geography at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in the context of the Circular Grassroots project on housing cooperatives, and as international co-investigator of a grant on post growth cities and the cultural politics of mobility transitions in London and Barcelona. Before this work she did het PhD at the University of Oxford (see her thesis here), and a post-doctoral research for the PROSPERA project at the University of Vigo in Spain.In the episode we go into depth on three key themes she zooms in on in her recently published chapter “Reconfiguring more-than-human relations in eco-communities: Skillsets, empowerment and discomfort” in the book “Eco-communities: surviving well together” edited by Jenny Pickerill (you can find the full book open access here). As the chapter title already suggests, we discuss skills, power, and comfort. Elisa shares a lot of concrete examples - some of which are also recounted in the chapters, others that are not - and very insightful observations. Think of human relationships with walls and olives, and skills as ways humans negotiate their relationship with non-humans, who can resist human intervention and thus challenge the creativity and comfort of humans, as well as impact human-human relationships. Elisa recounts the impact of choosing a diversification of skill-sets rather than the specialization that we are used to in mainstream industrialized societies. For example, this changes every day lives of those using their skills, as well as who ends up being more or less able to shape their surroundings.Elisa shares examples of discomfort with materials such as compost toilets, to finding comfort with various temperatures, to the discomforts of sharing spaces with people or using alternative cleaning products. She connects to Bissell’s work on comfort to discuss this, and overall shares several concepts and ways of looking at the three concepts that truly help picture not only life in these eco-communities, but how they reflect much of life outside them as well.Towards the end of the conversation we also dip into the subject of post-growth infrastructures Elisa is currently working on, from housing ownership ideals to streets and more, and how those could be re-thought in a post-growth context. I heartily recommend listening through to the end, despite it being a somewhat longer episode, since we do cover a lot of interesting examples and insights.Take-aways for planners, by Elisa Schramm:* Challenge yourself to see the places we live in as habitats, for us humans, but also for other species - thus seeing ourselves as just one of many inhabitants - and allowing this to influence choices we make* Seeing ourselves as bodies among other bodies. This can help think of change not only in cognitive terms, but realize the ways that embodied experiences make a big different in enabling changeReferences:Bissell, D. (2008). Comfortable Bodies: Sedentary Affects. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 40(7), 1697–1712.Pickerill, J., ed. (2025) Eco-communities: surviving well together. Bloomsbury Publishing.Schramm, E. (2021). The space-times of post-capitalist transformation: More-than-human affects in French and Catalan eco-communities (Doctoral dissertation, University of Oxford).Schramm, E. (2023). Examining the role of minor experiments in French and Catalan eco-communities: Between critique and post-capitalist world-building. Journal of Political Ecology, 30(1).Schramm, E., Lloveras, J., & Pansera, M. (2024). Transport innovations in the cracks: Reading for potential post-growth transport and mobilities with Deleuze and Guattari. Local Environment, 1–22.Schramm, E. (2025) Reconfiguring more-than-human relations in eco-communities: Skillsets, empowerment and discomfort. In: Pickerill, J., ed. (2025) Eco-communities: surviving well together. Bloomsbury Publishing, pp. 67-82.Schramm, E., & Savini, F. (2026). Toward post-growth infrastructure: Features, logics, strategies. Environment and Planning F: Philosophy, Theory, Models, Methods and Practice, 1–22. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit planetaryplanning.substack.com